Nick Archer, Elaine Brown, Denise de Cordova, James Fisher & Tom Hammick
12 September – 11 October 2024
The Eagle Gallery is delighted to announce VANISHINGS – our second collaboration with Turps Gallery, London.
Connected by themes of landscape the works in the exhibition carry different ideas. Meeting points between an inner world and that which exists beyond the inner world.
Some are landscapes of nature, others are landscapes of the mind Nick Archer’s glittering image of a forest at night is made over a support of black sandcloth that brings dark undercurrents into the moon-lit scene. Other of his paintings bear the motif of a burnt tree which emerges, almost cruciform, from within layers of splashed and abraded colour. Elaine Brown’s oils on panel are suffused with the deep green darkness of forest shadows. Their surfaces are bisected by veils of glaze that create ambiguous visual disruptions, transforming them from literal descriptions of nature’s phenomena into images of mystery. Denise de Cordova’s painted sculpture – a tableau of mushrooms, a snail’s shell and a goldfinch – alludes to her re-reading of Charlotte Bronte’s novel Jane Eyre, in which the landscape itself is a form of character, powerful and troubling. James Fisher’s visionary scenes abound with abundant foliage that heaves with the forms of writhing snakes and stranger creatures which emerge from different points within the images’ surfaces. A sense of restless movement is reflected in the figures of Tom Hammick’s field of flowers. The earth spills over with innumerable species of glorious flora, their radiance overshadowed by a darkening sky.
Art is telling of private stories. Artists create images of the specific to bring our attention to the universal. All of the works in the exhibition amply illustrate the wonderment of nature but they carry undercurrents of fragility, escapism and the possibility of loss.
For further details or images, please contact us at emmahilleagle@aol.com
Open Wednesday – Saturday, 12 – 6pm
Turps Gallery
The Chaplin Centre, Taplow House, Thurlow Street
London SE17 2DG
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FRAGILE STORIES
Mandy Bonnell and Déirdre Kelly
14 June – 8 January 2025
Museo del Merletto, Venice
Fragile Stories by Mandy Bonnell and Déirdre Kelly explores the historical practice of domestic lace-making, paying tribute to the extraordinary skill of its anonymous, female practitioners. Almost six years in development the exhibition features contemporary works made in response to artefacts held in the archives of the Palazzo Mocenigo and the outstanding lace collection held at the Museo del Merletto.
Fragile Stories expresses the desire to embrace and participate in the rich creativity of the female hand, attuned to the delicate rhythms of nature and often – like lace itself – far stronger than it seems. It is a conversation with lace makers of the past that touches on issues of fragility and durability, manifested in delicate objects and beautiful traceries cut into fine papers and geographical maps.
Bonnell’s Imparaticci pages and lace ‘hems’ originate in the pin-pricked sampler books that were passed down in families from generation to generation as the templates for lace patterns. Her drawings bear references to traditional floral designs such as the Venetian ‘Punta Rosa’ motif and to the repetitive rhythms of stitching that are expressed in her work as grids of tiny pencil marks.
Kelly’s intricate, cut paper sculptures are fashioned into the shapes of stoles, collars, cuffs, gloves and babies shoes that are shown alongside examples of antique originals. Working with found paper maps she locates the objects in relation to areas renowned for the quality of their lace-making crafts and, in particular, to Venice.
Museo del Merletto
Burano, Piazza Galuppi, 187, 30142 Venezia (VE) Italy www.museomerletto.visitmuve.it
(Open 10.00 – 16.00 Closed Mondays)
